


this is the correlation of salvation and love

by seventhstar



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3749878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead, he was standing on said neighbor’s front porch, covered in flour and powdered sugar, holding a measuring cup and feeling very stupid.<br/>____</p>
<p>dorunasch next door neighbors au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is the correlation of salvation and love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rangerhitomi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/gifts).



Durbe didn’t know his name, only his face: blue eyes, purple hair that fell to his shoulders, sharp white features. He appeared to live alone. He drove a motorcycle.

Durbe had nearly run him over on his first day in his new neighborhood, and had quietly adjusted his schedule so that he arrived late and left early afterward. The last thing he wanted was an ugly confrontation with his new neighbor.

Instead, he was standing on said neighbor’s front porch, covered in flour and powdered sugar, holding a measuring cup and feeling very stupid.

He closed his eyes. Durbe felt exhausted all ready, and he had only an hour left, to make a pie and get himself cleaned up, and the kitchen needed to be cleaned, and he would have to sit through his boss’s dinner party, pretending to laugh at his jokes, pretending to enjoy their conversations, pretending he didn’t hate everything.

He hoped his neighbor wouldn’t hold a grudge.

Durbe knocked on the door. After a moment it swung open. “IV, I swear to God,” he heard, and then the man stopped mid-sentence and stared.

“Hey,” he said.

Durbe nodded. He was holding onto the measuring cup so hard his knuckles were white. “May I have a cup of sugar?”

“What kind?”

“It’s for a pie.” Durbe said. “I’m Durbe. I live next door.”

“I remember.” The cup was taken from his hands. “Come in. I’m Ryoga.”

Durbe tracked flour across the spotless hardwood floor. Ryoga’s living room and kitchen looked like they’d come out of a magazine; blue and black and brown and red, all furniture oversized and plush, with an enormous fish tank on the wall.

In contrast, Durbe was still living out of boxes and suitcases, and there were rooms in his house without furniture since he had been living in a shitty studio before while he hoarded money, and he only owned a mattress and two barstools, plus some meager kitchen things.

Ryoga’s beautiful house was a little intimidating.

He watched as Ryoga went into the kitchen, which was full of steel appliances and black granite countertops, and rummaged around for sugar. He was dressed casually, and there was lean muscle on his bare arms, and now that Durbe was paying attention to him he was handsome.

He forced himself to not think of it. He just needed to get the sugar, and go back to his house, and make the pie so his co-workers and boss would stop thinking of him as a wet blanket and maybe he could get transfer he’d been begging for. He was so tired, but Durbe made himself focus; he could last a little longer. He let himself close his eyes…

“Are you okay?”

Ryoga was holding out the cup of sugar to him. Durbe nodded and took it. He stepped back, intending to leave. To make the pie.

He swayed on his feet. He was so tired.

“Maybe you should sit down.” Ryoga said firmly, and he left and came back with a towel, while Durbe tried to convince himself to leave. Ryoga laid the towel over one of the chairs at his kitchen table and pushed Durbe into it.

“No, I have to make a pie.” Durbe said. He put a hand on the table to push himself up.

“You can’t even stand up.” Ryoga put his hands on Durbe’s shoulder to keep him in the chair. He looked annoyed and stern, and the room was starting to blur, and Durbe remembered dimly that he’d almost run him over.

“I’m sorry about almost hitting you with my car.” He said.

“Just park on the curb. Mailboxes are fucking expensive.”

“I have to go to a dinner party.” Durbe murmured. His tongue felt heavy. “I have to…I hate this. I hate everything.”

He covered his mouth with his hand, to silence himself. It was Ryoga’s hands on his shoulders, on his comfort-starved, lonely body, that were doing this to him. It had been so long — his best friend had gone to China for six months and Durbe was so alone — since anyone had listened.

“You should just…go home and sleep.” Ryoga said. His voice had lost the angry edge. It was a nice voice, low and comforting. Durbe closed his eyes again, listened to it…

+++++

He woke up in his own bed in his underwear, and for a moment Durbe assumed that humiliating experience at Ryoga’s home had been a stress-induced nightmare.

Then he realized he was not alone and he nearly fell off the bed.

Ryoga was asleep beside him, lying on the mattress on the floor that served as Durbe’s bed because he hadn’t bought a real one yet. He was shirtless and his hair was mussed. He was very attractive, and Durbe would have appreciated that sight more if he knew how Ryoga had ended up in his bedroom.

“Ryoga?” Durbe shook him awake. “Ryoga?”

“Oh, it’s you.” Ryoga sounded deeply unhappy. He sat up. “Don’t freak out.”

“Why are you here? This is my house.”

“You’re the one who fell asleep and wouldn’t wake up! I couldn’t just leave you there, and when I tried to leave you wouldn’t let go of me and you started crying —”

“I’m so sorry,” Durbe said faintly.

“Whatever. I’ll leave.” He stood up, and Durbe was horribly aware of how empty his house must look. And his kitchen was a mess, covered in the remains of his first attempt at making pie.

Ryoga’s back was beautiful, and Durbe watched the muscles flex as he stretched while he walked towards the door. He opened it, and then stopped and turned.

“Hey,” he said. He wouldn’t meet Durbe’s eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

It sounded like the lie it was. Ryoga lingered there in the doorway, staring at the ground.

And then he was gone. Durbe was profoundly grateful it was his day off, and he lay back on the mattress (still warm where Ryoga had laid beside him out of pity) and tried not to think of anything at all.

Eventually he ventured downstairs, when his stomach ached with hunger and the sun was high in the sky. The kitchen had been scrubbed clean, and there was a foil-covered dish on the counter with a post-it note on top.

_Here’s that pie you wanted._

_-Ryoga Kamishiro_

Durbe cut himself an enormous slice, his eyes watering at the kindness of it all. It was delicious and warm and sweet, and he had not eaten so well in months. He thought again of Ryoga’s halting explanation — ‘you started crying’ — and though his face heated, it was almost a relief.

Maybe, he thought, it would work out. Maybe he was not alone, after all.

+++++

BONUS:

“So then we just dip them in the melted chocolate?”

“Yeah.” Ryoga pulled the tray of frozen cake balls out of the freezer. “Here. Grab a stick and start dipping them.”

Durbe reached across the counter for the package of lollipop sticks.

“Watch the bo—” Durbe turned to look at Ryoga, knocked into the bowl of melted chocolate with his elbow, and upended it. Warm, sticky liquid chocolate splattered everywhere: across the counter, dripping onto the floor, down the front of Durbe’s shirt, and amazing, in one streak across Ryoga’s face. The contrast against his skin was striking.

Ryoga sighed. “You cook like you drive.”

Durbe just smiled. It was still surreal to him, that somehow over the course of the past four months Ryoga had decided to teach him how to cook, had helped him get promoted, and had starting dragging him to parties to meet his friends because ‘you can’t just show up and start crying on me’. He always acted as though it was a huge imposition, but he never let Durbe back out of anything, either.

Durbe had figured out quickly that what Ryoga did was much more important than what he said.

(Sometimes he caught Ryoga staring at him, and sometimes Ryoga caught him staring.)

“I suppose we should clean it up before it dries.”

“I’ll get paper towels.” Ryoga started to turn away, and Durbe reached out without thinking and swiped the melted chocolate off his face with his finger.

Ryoga watched very closely as he licked it off.

“You should take off your shirt.”

Durbe started to tug at the buttons of his ruined shirt, and Ryoga pressed him back against the counter and covered his hands with his own. He was suddenly very close, and it was very warm, and his eyes were much bluer from this angle.

Durbe leaned in.

“You should take off your pants, too.” Ryoga murmured as the shirt ended up around Durbe’s elbows and he scooped up a drop of chocolate off Durbe’s neck.

“I didn’t spill anything on them.” Durbe protested, as Ryoga stuck his finger in his mouth and decided to cut out the middleman by licking up another dollop of chocolate off Durbe’s neck directly. His hands fell to Durbe’s waist, holding him close.

“Yeah, but I can’t fuck you with them on.” Ryoga said, and when he kissed Durbe, Durbe forgot everything else but the sweetness of it.


End file.
